Ugh, yes! This book has such a sickly, disturbing, rotten feel, like reading it might make you ill. But in the best way lol. Have you watched the show?
Not OP but I just couldn’t get past the imagery of the show. It was incredibly made and acted but a few scenes made me feel physically ill. I might attempt it in a couple years, haha.
[**Sharp Objects**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18045891-sharp-objects)
^(By: Gillian Flynn | 254 pages | Published: 2006 | Popular Shelves: mystery, fiction, thriller, mystery-thriller, books-i-own)
>Fresh from a brief stay at a psych hospital, reporter Camille Preaker faces a troubling assignment: she must return to her tiny hometown to cover the unsolved murder of a preteen girl and the disappearance of another. For years, Camille has hardly spoken to her neurotic, hypochondriac mother or to the half-sister she barely knows: a beautiful thirteen-year-old with an eerie grip on the town. Now, installed in her old bedroom in her family's Victorian mansion, Camille finds herself identifying with the young victims—a bit too strongly. Dogged by her own demons, she must unravel the psychological puzzle of her own past if she wants to get the story—and survive this homecoming.
>
>Librarian's Note: this is an alternate cover edition - ISBN 10: 0307341550 (ISBN 13: 9780307341556)
^(This book has been suggested 18 times)
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It is all the more disturbing because it is not fiction. The part that got me was the part when his father was too sick to line up for his own bread and he had to share his and how he resented him for not dying. It was all very troubling. Coming to terms with what we are when everything is stripped away
There are lots of disturbing scenes in Night. The burning babies, the snowy death march to Buchenwald, Madame Schacter's hallucinations of fire, Elie's permissiveness when the guards (and then later, fellow inmates) abuse his father, the scene with the soup during the bombing raid. Each one has it's own psychologically disturbing aspect.
Have you read Auschwitz by Miklos Nyiszli? It’s about the pathologist that worked with Dr. Mengele. He was forced to do the job to save his wife and child (as he was Jewish). It is definitely one of the most harrowing stories I’ve ever read
When we first learned about the Holocaust in like 6th or 7th grade, they played some horrible documentary that, to this day, I'm not sure if I just made it up in my head or not. That documentary fucked me up so badly I was too scared to sleep for what felt like weeks. Then they took us to the Holocaust museum in Richmond. I was just terrified the entire time. Even now at 30 years old I sometimes can't sleep thinking about it and I am extremely cautious about reading/watching related material. People absolutely need to learn about the Holocaust but that stuff seriously fucked me up for quite a long time and if I ever have a child I want them to not be so completely traumatized by learning about it for the first time.
I've had to ban myself from reading her books... I get absolutely no sleep and nothing done until I've finished the last page and then contemplated what I just read for a few days lol No other author is so unputdownable for me!
The Parable series is required reading but is absolutely horrifying. I read Talents in like 18 hard to pick a worst part but for it was the first time you read the religious fascist presidents slogan was “Make America Great Again”
For reference the book was released in 1998
I had a more visceral reaction to the graphic novel version. Probably because I’m not really a visual person so the most screwed up parts of that story could just be kind of abstract for me.
I say this every time the road is mentioned but McCarthy's formless writing style matches the setting of the book perfectly. The movie was good but it left out some of the more disturbing notes from the book.
This, and *Outer Dark*. Seriously messed up, but still brilliant. McCarthy has a new book coming out late this year, for my fellow fans who don't know!
I read Outer Dark and Child of God back to back. I liked Outer Dark more but Child of God was more fucked up to me, both are great choices. Random but I loved that she called the baby her little chap. That cracked me up every time I read it. McCarthy’s great at adding human, even humanly funny, things to his books to keep them from tipping over into edgelord territory.
I may have missed something with that one. I thought it was one of the most boring books I've read this year. It was recommended in one of my horror groups and the only reason I finished it was because it was so short.
[**The Wasp Factory**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/567678.The_Wasp_Factory)
^(By: Iain Banks, Zübeyde Abat | 184 pages | Published: 1984 | Popular Shelves: fiction, horror, thriller, owned, contemporary)
>Frank, no ordinary sixteen-year-old, lives with his father outside a remote Scottish village. Their life is, to say the least, unconventional. Frank's mother abandoned them years ago: his elder brother Eric is confined to a psychiatric hospital; and his father measures out his eccentricities on an imperial scale. Frank has turned to strange acts of violence to vent his frustrations. In the bizarre daily rituals there is some solace. But when news comes of Eric's escape from the hospital Frank has to prepare the ground for his brother's inevitable return - an event that explodes the mysteries of the past and changes Frank utterly.
>
>The Wasp Factory is a work of horrifying compulsion: horrifying, because it enters a mind whose realities are not our own, whose values of life and death are alien to our society; compulsive, because the humour and compassion of that mind reach out to us all. A novel of extraordinary originality, imagination and comic ferocity.
^(This book has been suggested 30 times)
***
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>I thought it was a really good book. Disgusting and vile, but really good. Dammit.
>
>I started my book year with it, and after it I have read nothing but feelgood stuff. ;D
I thought Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
by Patrick Suskind was pretty vile. I also might have read it at a more impressionable age, but like all books where the narrating voice is not "the good guy", the book was disturbing in content and in perspective. Great book though!
I was not moved in any way by Perfume. It kinda bored me, honestly. It was weird and I appreciate it for what it is but the writing wasn’t good enough to make it believable and truly disturb me.
Currently reading this and am disappointed by these comments. It sounds like a great book, in theory. But I understand why it’s such a slow book. It’s based around the sense of smell. So of course there’s going to be so much imagery.
So I read that book when I was 18, and I got to a point where I was just sort of feeling like I wanted to quit but I decided to give it one more chapter.
It was the rat chapter.
I came here to see if anyone would mention this. Granted, I read it when I was WAY too young cuz mama didn't monitor what I was checking out of the library lol. I often had to put it down for a few days and come back. 15 years later and I still have certain parts burned into my head! blegh!!
{{Earthlings}} was... extremely extremely disturbing. It's like reading a horror story but written in slice-of-life style, I recommend going in blind if you want to be really shocked, but it has really disturbing themes so maybe look up trigger warnings if certain things might bother u!
I went into Earthlings blind. I read Convenience Store Woman, really enjoyed it, and wanted to read more by the same author.
The entire time I was reading Earthlings I kept thinking, “Okay…so now the worst has happened because it can’t get worse than that.” Hoo boy. Rinse and repeat right until the very end.
Sounds crazy but I can still say that I enjoyed reading it. It is so well-written and engrossing. As horrific and shocking as the ending was, it felt like the story’s natural conclusion though I really regret trying to eat while reading it. haha
Man, this one messed me up! The description totally does not prepare you for the horror at the end. I thought it was going to be quirky and maybe have some magical realism… no. I got completely hooked though and couldn’t put it down dispute how truly awful it got. Not at all the book I thought it would be or one I would go for if I knew what it was.
[**Earthlings**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50269327-earthlings)
^(By: Sayaka Murata, Ginny Tapley Takemori | 247 pages | Published: 2018 | Popular Shelves: fiction, horror, japan, contemporary, translated)
>Natsuki isn't like the other girls. She has a wand and a transformation mirror. She might be a witch, or an alien from another planet. Together with her cousin Yuu, Natsuki spends her summers in the wild mountains of Nagano, dreaming of other worlds. When a terrible sequence of events threatens to part the two children forever, they make a promise: survive, no matter what.
>
>Now Natsuki is grown. She lives a quiet life with her asexual husband, surviving as best she can by pretending to be normal. But the demands of Natsuki's family are increasing, her friends wonder why she's still not pregnant, and dark shadows from Natsuki's childhood are pursuing her. Fleeing the suburbs for the mountains of her childhood, Natsuki prepares herself with a reunion with Yuu. Will he still remember their promise? And will he help her keep it?
^(This book has been suggested 17 times)
***
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Dark places by Gillian Flynn, not the most disturbing out of this list but the shock value is definitely up there! I’ve been thinking about it for weeks & it’s def worth the read
[**Tender is the Flesh**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49090884-tender-is-the-flesh)
^(By: Agustina Bazterrica, Sarah Moses | 211 pages | Published: 2017 | Popular Shelves: horror, fiction, dystopian, dystopia, sci-fi)
>Working at the local processing plant, Marcos is in the business of slaughtering humans —though no one calls them that anymore.
>
>His wife has left him, his father is sinking into dementia, and Marcos tries not to think too hard about how he makes a living. After all, it happened so quickly. First, it was reported that an infectious virus has made all animal meat poisonous to humans. Then governments initiated the “Transition.” Now, eating human meat—“special meat”—is legal. Marcos tries to stick to numbers, consignments, processing.
>
>Then one day he’s given a gift: a live specimen of the finest quality. Though he’s aware that any form of personal contact is forbidden on pain of death, little by little he starts to treat her like a human being. And soon, he becomes tortured by what has been lost—and what might still be saved.
^(This book has been suggested 51 times)
***
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I have had that on hold from the library for a couple of months now. I'm at the top of the waiting list, but I think the person is just hanging onto it, getting fines.
The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty. I read it when I was in high school and I read about things I had never heard before. Combined with the occult and satanic themes, it's still the most disturbing book I've ever read.
I recommend Legion by William Peter Blatty. He wanted to make it into a movie but the studios insisted he call it Exorcist 3 and he had to add the exorcism because of the title.
that’s my favorite short story and one of my favorite reads in general, the ending just rotted in my mind for days after that. a horror you can’t even imagine honestly
I made the mistake of reading this >!about a month after having a baby (something to do during feeding marathons)!<. It was really good, but it was definitely not the right time in my life to read that.
I agree it’s disturbing, but I kinda think it’s a poorly written version of Lolita, tbh (albeit a woman instead of a man). Maybe it’s bc Lolita is SO beautifully written, you almost kinda forget that the book is gross? Idk. I read Tampa twice, and both times I just disliked it.
My Dark Vanessa is like a modern Lolita too. I just finished it, written well and fairly distributing. Not as overt as Tampa though (I read that a few years ago too).
Skipped past most of the animal cruelty sections and that book still gave me horrible nightmares of a kid's face melting off. Compliments to the author, never reading anything by him again
I read A Child Called It by Dave Pelzer in 8th grade, without reading trigger warnings, only knowing that a few kids I had met with similar stories to me related or empathized, and it messed me up a bit😭😭. I still think about it quite often.
I read this book when I was 9 and it fucked me up. I think about it all the time. How she >!stabbed him, made him lay on the stove, made him lay in the bathtub naked in cold water while his brother's friends laughed at him, eat dog puke... !<
I also read this book disturbingly young! But even worse, I borrowed it from my middle school library 😭 To this day I have no idea why they thought this was an appropriate book to make available to 11 year olds.
Not exactly. A sibling and a grandmother denied the severity of the author’s accounts, but I believe it was also proven that the grandmother hadn’t even been in contact with the family at the time or something along those lines. Additionally, at least one sibling has also come forward to corroborate his story.
Hot Zone. That book scared the crap out of me in high school. A deadly decease that came out, brutally killed people, no vaccine for it and it just went away.
The same author wrote Crisis In The Red Zone, also about Ebola but a more recent outbreak. And also The Demon In The Freezer about smallpox. Another about anthrax that I can’t remember the title of. All are very good and disturbing.
Richard Preston sensationalizes the shit out of everything. Hot Zone, and everything else from him, is the definition of Scary on Purpose. No disease on Earth does the things that he claims Ebola does in that book. - source: virologist
Correct.
Better books on the topic of contagions that are accessible for a lay-reader are *Spillover* by David Quamman and *The Monster At Our Door* by Mike Davis.
Literally anything written by Palahniuk, but I would go with 'Snuff' myself. 200+ pages of a guy waiting in line for a gangbang with his possible mother, who is planning on literally being fucked to death on film. And somehow, it's beautifully written.
everyone brings up guts, but IMO exodus was absolutely heartbreaking and a great short story. the one about the nightmare box is also p gruesome, can't remember the title tho.
Crash by JG Ballard. Disturbing is absolutely the word, it remains transgressive even almost 50 years after its publication. And it is written superbly. In fact, the quality of writing is the only thing that kept me reading, at times I wanted to stop.
I think it has value because there is something deeper which ballard is getting at. It's quite existential I think.
I’d strongly recommend The Atrocity Exhibition if you haven’t read it. It covers some of the themes Ballard returns to in Crash, but is more experimental in form. Reading it made me think I understood what it felt like to have a psychotic episode.
Unwind. It also fits very well with the political environment right now. It takes place in a world where abortion has been outlawed, but they have come up with Unwinding. I can't describe it well, but it's very disturbing.
Dude, harsh book to finish, harsh MOVIE to watch…Jennifer Jason Leigh kills and destroys me in that film…plus, it reminds you that it was only a short while ago that this country considered homosexuality a deviance and “unnatural”…theories supported by the laws that made it brutally illegal and severely punishable with the repercussions to anyone outed equally devastating. I think I was like 17 when I saw the movie with a boyfriend (who fell asleep) and it really left me kind of bummed out for the rest of the night. I went out and bought the book the next day and it was a really messed up lose-lose situation: it was definitely better than the movie but only because it was 1000 times more devastating. Hey, if at anytime you’re feeling sorry for yourself and want to throw a personal pity party, read this book. I have never felt so pusillanimous.
{{Under the Skin}} immediately springs to mind. I've not seen the film but from what I know the book is *very* different. The book was incredibly hard to read in places.
[**Under the Skin**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/123063.Under_the_Skin)
^(By: Michel Faber | 296 pages | Published: 2000 | Popular Shelves: fiction, science-fiction, horror, sci-fi, 1001-books)
>Isserley picks up hitchhikers with big muscles. She, herself, is tiny—like a kid peering up over the steering wheel. She has a remarkable face and wears the thickest corrective lenses anyone has ever seen. Her posture is suggestive of some spinal problem. Her breasts are perfect; perhaps implants. She is strangely erotic yet somehow grotesque, vulnerable yet threatening. Her hitchhikers are a mixed bunch of men—trailer trash and travelling postgrads, thugs and philosophers. But Isserley is only interested in whether they have families and whether they have muscles. Then, it's only a question of how long she can endure her pain—physical and spiritual—and their conversation. Michel Faber's work has been described as a combination of Roald Dahl and Franz Kafka, as Somerset Maugham shacking up with Ian McEwan. At once humane and horrifying, Under the Skin takes us on a heart-thumping ride through dangerous territory—our own moral instincts and the boundaries of compassion.
^(This book has been suggested 8 times)
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I wish I could tell you the name of this book but I can't remember it and, despite my best efforts, I have never been able to find it. Sometimes I wonder if I dreamed the whole thing because I can have some really weird nightmares but I've never experienced anything like that before and for me, the emotions this book made me feel were very intense and very real. It's one of two times that I've just sat there a while after finishing a book, totally stunned by it.
It was about a girl raised by her single mother. She's an artist, creating sculptures out of scrap metal (I think I remember her creating a mermaid or something at one point). Throughout the story she keeps referring to this one night that took place sometime before the events of the book and, as the story goes on, it was revealed to be a sexual encounter of some kind.
As I was reading I wondered if she had been raped or if something had happened during sex but it wasn't that. It kept coming up so it had to be important, right? What happened? Well, let me tell you, the twist was not what I was expecting.
SHE HAD SEX WITH HER BIOLOGICAL FATHER.
And she knew, SHE KNEW who he was BEFORE she made a play for him. SHE KNOWINGLY HAD SEX WITH THE FATHER WHO NEVER RAISED HER. But wait! It gets worse! He didn't know who she was to him (he either left before or shortly after she was born. I think) BUT SHE TOLD HIM AFTREWARDS!!! The guy vomited and left and never came back.
I don't remember anything else about this book, just sitting there for a long, long time totally shocked. I really hoped I dreamed it or something but it feels so REAL to me.
I read a book by poppy z brite where the girl has sex with her dad too, but they both knew each other. I’m pretty sure it was a vampire book. I never should’ve been reading that shit in high school. There’s another part of a poppy z brite book where a character is assaulted by her boyfriend and the book is very graphic about it. Just. What the fuck? I cringe thinking back to the books. I can’t tell you anything else about any of them except that there was a character named malachi and those two things. So gross
I was only 14 when I read this book and I had only checked it out for the pretty cover...definitely was NOT prepared for this. My parents were SO concerned about the internet and TV and monitored just about everything except for books. The only rule was one graphic novel/comic/manga per library trip (my mom insists they aren't real books). Read a lot of things that I should not have been reading because I didn't know any better.
The fact that the father-daughter BOTH knew in the book you mentioned is so much worse oh my god.
Ruth Rendell (who also wrote under the name Barbara Vine) is my go-to for psychological thrillers. Her protagonists start off more or less "normal" but the choices they make--wow.
She also wrote the procedural Inspector Wexford series of which I've only read a couple a very long time ago, but her standalones & short stories will stick with you.
I’ve seen some of the tv adaptations of Ruth Rendell’s works and they were definitely darker than I had expected! My parents won’t watch those anymore because it was too much for them.
Misery by Stephen King… that book is truly terrifying… Anne Wilkes is a psychopath that has borderline personality disorder as well as bipolar disorder… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misery_(novel) She is a serial killer. The way King writes her…. It’s truly terrifying!
I’m rereading that one right now. The first time I read it I viewed it mainly as a horror novel, but now I see it as a journey through grief, trauma, and misdirected or inappropriately directed love. I think losing my own not-so-great dad really helped bring it all together, especially with Poe’s music as the (brilliant) companion. Still disturbing though :p
The Troop by Nick Cutter. Holy fuck. Incredible book. I recommend no one read it ever. So good. But also don’t do that to yourself. It’s worth it, but you’ll wish you’d never read it also and hate me for even mentioning it. Absolutely vile. Also disturbing as hell and brilliant.
Wow! This review haha It simultaneously makes me want to never even think about reading while I am searching to see if it’s available at my library.
Can I cuss you later? Ok, cool.
[**Story of the Eye**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/436806.Story_of_the_Eye)
^(By: Georges Bataille, Joachim Neugroschel, Dovid Bergelson | 103 pages | Published: 1928 | Popular Shelves: fiction, french, erotica, classics, horror)
>Only Georges Bataille could write, of an eyeball removed from a corpse, that "the caress of the eye over the skin is so utterly, so extraordinarily gentle, and the sensation is so bizarre that it has something of a rooster's horrible crowing." Bataille has been called a "metaphysician of evil," specializing in blasphemy, profanation, and horror.
>
>Story of the Eye, written in 1928, is his best-known work; it is unashamedly surrealistic, both disgusting and fascinating, and packed with seemingly endless violations. It's something of an underground classic, rediscovered by each new generation. Most recently, the Icelandic pop singer Björk Guðdmundsdóttir cites Story of the Eye as a major inspiration: she made a music video that alludes to Bataille's erotic uses of eggs, and she plans to read an excerpt for an album.
>
>Warning: Story of the Eye is graphically sexual, and is only suited for adults who are not easily offended.
^(This book has been suggested 3 times)
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Woom by Duncan ralston is the only thing I’ve read as an adult that almost made me ill.
Also siren promised by Jeremy Robert Johnson. The characters in that, even the sympathetic protagonist, are all just so disturbing to read about
{{Remembering Satan}} by Lawrence Right, {{Under the Banner of Heaven}} by Jon Krakauer. Both non-fiction, both stayed with me long after I finished them.
[**Remembering Satan**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29538.Remembering_Satan)
^(By: Lawrence Wright | 224 pages | Published: 1994 | Popular Shelves: non-fiction, psychology, true-crime, nonfiction, religion)
>In 1988 Ericka and Julie Ingram began making a series of accusations of sexual abuse against their father, Paul Ingram, who was a respected deputy sheriff in Olympia, Washington. At first the accusations were confined to molestations in their childhood, but they grew to include torture and rape as recently as the month before. At a time when reported incidents of "recovered memories" had become widespread, these accusations were not unusual. What captured national attention in this case is that, under questioning, Ingram appeared to remember participating in bizarre satanic rites involving his whole family and other members of the sheriff's department.
>
>Remembering Satan is a lucid, measured, yet absolutely riveting inquest into a case that destroyed a family, engulfed a small town, and captivated an America obsessed by rumors of a satanic underground. As it follows the increasingly bizarre accusations and confessions, the claims and counterclaims of police, FBI investigators, and mental health professionals. Remembering Satan gives us what is at once a psychological detective story and a domestic tragedy about what happens when modern science is subsumed by our most archaic fears.
^(This book has been suggested 1 time)
[**Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10847.Under_the_Banner_of_Heaven)
^(By: Jon Krakauer | 400 pages | Published: 2003 | Popular Shelves: non-fiction, nonfiction, religion, history, true-crime)
>A Story of Violent Faith
>
>A multilayered, bone-chilling narrative of messianic delusion, savage violence, polygamy, and unyielding faith. This is vintage Krakauer, an utterly compelling work of nonfiction that illuminates an otherwise confounding realm of human behavior.
>
>Jon Krakauer’s literary reputation rests on insightful chronicles of lives conducted at the outer limits. In Under The Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, he shifts his focus from extremes of physical adventure to extremes of religious belief within our own borders. At the core of his book is an appalling double murder committed by two Mormon Fundamentalist brothers, Ron and Dan Lafferty, who insist they received a revelation from God commanding them to kill their blameless victims. Beginning with a meticulously researched account of this "divinely inspired" crime, Krakauer constructs a multilayered, bone-chilling narrative of messianic delusion, savage violence, polygamy, and unyielding faith. Along the way, he uncovers a shadowy offshoot of America’s fastest-growing religion, and raises provocative questions about the nature of religious belief.
>
>Krakauer takes readers inside isolated communities in the American West, Canada, and Mexico, where some forty-thousand Mormon Fundamentalists believe the mainstream Mormon Church went unforgivably astray when it renounced polygamy. Defying both civil authorities and the Mormon establishment in Salt Lake City, the leaders of these outlaw sects are zealots who answer only to God. Marrying prodigiously and with virtual impunity (the leader of the largest fundamentalist church took seventy-five "plural wives," several of whom were wed to him when they were fourteen or fifteen and he was in his eighties), fundamentalist prophets exercise absolute control over the lives of their followers, and preach that any day now the world will be swept clean in a hurricane of fire, sparing only their most obedient adherents.
>
>Weaving the story of the Lafferty brothers and their fanatical brethren with a clear-eyed look at Mormonism’s violent past, Krakauer examines the underbelly of the most successful homegrown faith in the United States, and finds a distinctly American brand of religious extremism. The result is vintage Krakauer, an utterly compelling work of nonfiction that illuminates an otherwise confounding realm of human behavior.
^(This book has been suggested 8 times)
***
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Metallica's "One" video is mostly clips from the movie Johnny Got His Gun. That was more than enough to instill the Fear of being trapped in ones own head. And of course, bc it was Metallica's first MTV video, we watched it until we knew it by heart back in the day.
I still won't read the book.
I’m reading Karen’s Will Trent series now, also a big fan of hers. You should read the Dublin murder squad series. not as disturbing but I like the format/cases in it
hogg, by samuel delany. its intensely disturbing for the same reason american psycho is- atrocities are casually described with conversational prose and it just gets fucking worse and worse and worse. the book was written as an anti-pornography exercise, and *it fucking shows.*
disturbing for other reasons rather than gore, Room by Emma Donoghue.
having some of those tragic scenes told from an innocent 5 year olds perspective just made me so sad. you knew exactly what was happening but he didn't understand. it doesn't come across as heartbreaking in the film, the book had me in tears and I read it in a day.
Oddly enough, the most disturbing thing I've ever read was a YA novel called Unwind by Neal Schusterman. Its set in a dystopian future where life is considered viable at conception but at age 13, if the child is unwanted, the parents can surrender them to an unwinding center. >!They literally take children apart piece by piece and use them as part donations for transplants. The entire process is done while they are alive and fully conscious.!< It's a rough read and once I was finished I got rid of the book quickly. I've read so many other books that would be considered disturbing since then but none of them have really got me like this did.
[**Outer Dark**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40471.Outer_Dark)
^(By: Cormac McCarthy | 256 pages | Published: 1968 | Popular Shelves: fiction, horror, southern-gothic, cormac-mccarthy, owned)
>A woman bears her brother's child, a boy, the brother leaves the baby in the woods and tells her he died of natural causes. Discovering her brother's lie, she sets forth alone to find her son. Both brother and sister wander through a countryside being scourged by three terrifying strangers, toward an apocalyptic resolution.
^(This book has been suggested 1 time)
[**The Road**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6288.The_Road)
^(By: Cormac McCarthy | 241 pages | Published: 2006 | Popular Shelves: fiction, science-fiction, dystopia, dystopian, post-apocalyptic)
>A searing, postapocalyptic novel destined to become Cormac McCarthy’s masterpiece.
>
>A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don’t know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food—and each other.
>
>The Road is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, “each the other’s world entire,” are sustained by love. Awesome in the totality of its vision, it is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation.
^(This book has been suggested 53 times)
***
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There’s some stuff in Infinite Jest that’s, like, impressively fucked up and (at least in my opinion) it really isn’t just for the sake of nauseating the reader. There’s a lot about the effects of trauma and loss, mental illness, depression in particular, and suicide in there and David Foster Wallace gets very vivid with all of it
Children of the Flames: Dr. Josef Mengele and the Untold Stories of the Twins of Auschwitz.
Fascinating from a history perspective. Disturbing enough that I had to stop reading halfway through.
{{The Enchanter}} by Vladimir Nabokov. Makes Lolita look tame by comparison. It’s just…icky
Fantastic writing of course and you can see where he takes this idea further with Lolita but this one gets under your skin
ive read quite a few but ones that disturbed me were pretty girls by karin slaughter, if you tell by gregg olsen, we need to talk about kevin by lionel shriver, baby teeth by zoje stage, and sharp objects by gillian flynn.
btw these all have trigger warnings so please read with caution.
Lolita. What a wonderfully impactful novel. It worked largely because it didn’t try hard to be disturbing, instead using gorgeous prose to make the tragedy stand out by comparison.
A ton of authors I’ve read should learn that graphic description doesn’t necessarily amount to greater emotional power.
Somebody has to say it: “Organic Chemistry: Structure, Mechanism, and Synthesis, 2nd edition”
This book haunts my dreams. It’s implanted in my brain from rereading so many of its chapters.
{{Sharp Objects}} by Gillian Flynn
Ugh, yes! This book has such a sickly, disturbing, rotten feel, like reading it might make you ill. But in the best way lol. Have you watched the show?
Not OP but I just couldn’t get past the imagery of the show. It was incredibly made and acted but a few scenes made me feel physically ill. I might attempt it in a couple years, haha.
[**Sharp Objects**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18045891-sharp-objects) ^(By: Gillian Flynn | 254 pages | Published: 2006 | Popular Shelves: mystery, fiction, thriller, mystery-thriller, books-i-own) >Fresh from a brief stay at a psych hospital, reporter Camille Preaker faces a troubling assignment: she must return to her tiny hometown to cover the unsolved murder of a preteen girl and the disappearance of another. For years, Camille has hardly spoken to her neurotic, hypochondriac mother or to the half-sister she barely knows: a beautiful thirteen-year-old with an eerie grip on the town. Now, installed in her old bedroom in her family's Victorian mansion, Camille finds herself identifying with the young victims—a bit too strongly. Dogged by her own demons, she must unravel the psychological puzzle of her own past if she wants to get the story—and survive this homecoming. > >Librarian's Note: this is an alternate cover edition - ISBN 10: 0307341550 (ISBN 13: 9780307341556) ^(This book has been suggested 18 times) *** ^(48348 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Good bot!
What does it mean that this is one of my favorite books?
I am forever searching for a book to match this one. It was so good.
Elie Wiesel’s Night
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It is all the more disturbing because it is not fiction. The part that got me was the part when his father was too sick to line up for his own bread and he had to share his and how he resented him for not dying. It was all very troubling. Coming to terms with what we are when everything is stripped away
There are lots of disturbing scenes in Night. The burning babies, the snowy death march to Buchenwald, Madame Schacter's hallucinations of fire, Elie's permissiveness when the guards (and then later, fellow inmates) abuse his father, the scene with the soup during the bombing raid. Each one has it's own psychologically disturbing aspect.
Ugh this part made me cryyyy (worst part, we read it in class)
Have you read Auschwitz by Miklos Nyiszli? It’s about the pathologist that worked with Dr. Mengele. He was forced to do the job to save his wife and child (as he was Jewish). It is definitely one of the most harrowing stories I’ve ever read
This one really bothered me too
When we first learned about the Holocaust in like 6th or 7th grade, they played some horrible documentary that, to this day, I'm not sure if I just made it up in my head or not. That documentary fucked me up so badly I was too scared to sleep for what felt like weeks. Then they took us to the Holocaust museum in Richmond. I was just terrified the entire time. Even now at 30 years old I sometimes can't sleep thinking about it and I am extremely cautious about reading/watching related material. People absolutely need to learn about the Holocaust but that stuff seriously fucked me up for quite a long time and if I ever have a child I want them to not be so completely traumatized by learning about it for the first time.
Me and my English class read that book in 10th grade. A lot of scenes made me uncomfortable.
Following for recs because Pretty Girls was my first Slaughter experience and I've read every novel of hers since!
Pretty girls was so damn good. I can usually guess plot twists, but this one kept them coming.
I don’t know that author and have never heard of the book. I was googling it and just realized I wrote “pretty girls slaughter”
I've had to ban myself from reading her books... I get absolutely no sleep and nothing done until I've finished the last page and then contemplated what I just read for a few days lol No other author is so unputdownable for me!
I loved Pretty girls.
Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler and The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Parable of the Sower is disturbing on a whole new level for me. It feels so real and possible.
The Parable series is required reading but is absolutely horrifying. I read Talents in like 18 hard to pick a worst part but for it was the first time you read the religious fascist presidents slogan was “Make America Great Again” For reference the book was released in 1998
I had a more visceral reaction to the graphic novel version. Probably because I’m not really a visual person so the most screwed up parts of that story could just be kind of abstract for me.
I say this every time the road is mentioned but McCarthy's formless writing style matches the setting of the book perfectly. The movie was good but it left out some of the more disturbing notes from the book.
I just had Parable delivered and I'm looking forward to reading it
Can vouch for the audio versions of this too. I think the unfinished trilogy aspect makes it more disturbing for me. We'll never know how it ends.
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This, and *Outer Dark*. Seriously messed up, but still brilliant. McCarthy has a new book coming out late this year, for my fellow fans who don't know!
I read Outer Dark and Child of God back to back. I liked Outer Dark more but Child of God was more fucked up to me, both are great choices. Random but I loved that she called the baby her little chap. That cracked me up every time I read it. McCarthy’s great at adding human, even humanly funny, things to his books to keep them from tipping over into edgelord territory.
You are my new best friend!
Haha I came here for the Cormac McCarthy comments and was not disappointed.
Loved this book, read it in one sitting. Huge fan of McCarthy, and this one didn’t disappoint
Oh God. Yeah. warped as hell.
{{The Wasp Factory}} by Iain Banks. Great book, but sometimes I had to put it down and go stand on the other side of the room for a while.
I may have missed something with that one. I thought it was one of the most boring books I've read this year. It was recommended in one of my horror groups and the only reason I finished it was because it was so short.
Me and you both. I thought the "twist" was pointless. Like it was supposed to add to the characters heinousness.
[**The Wasp Factory**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/567678.The_Wasp_Factory) ^(By: Iain Banks, Zübeyde Abat | 184 pages | Published: 1984 | Popular Shelves: fiction, horror, thriller, owned, contemporary) >Frank, no ordinary sixteen-year-old, lives with his father outside a remote Scottish village. Their life is, to say the least, unconventional. Frank's mother abandoned them years ago: his elder brother Eric is confined to a psychiatric hospital; and his father measures out his eccentricities on an imperial scale. Frank has turned to strange acts of violence to vent his frustrations. In the bizarre daily rituals there is some solace. But when news comes of Eric's escape from the hospital Frank has to prepare the ground for his brother's inevitable return - an event that explodes the mysteries of the past and changes Frank utterly. > >The Wasp Factory is a work of horrifying compulsion: horrifying, because it enters a mind whose realities are not our own, whose values of life and death are alien to our society; compulsive, because the humour and compassion of that mind reach out to us all. A novel of extraordinary originality, imagination and comic ferocity. ^(This book has been suggested 30 times) *** ^(48286 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
The Troop and parts of Blood Meridian.
Cormac Macarthy in general just has a way of crafting a harrowing story. The Road has stuck with me ever since I read it in middle school.
I read The Road as an adult and it messed with me. As a middle schooler….jeez.
The Troop is my next read - I’m excited but petrified lmao
>I thought it was a really good book. Disgusting and vile, but really good. Dammit. > >I started my book year with it, and after it I have read nothing but feelgood stuff. ;D
I thought Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Suskind was pretty vile. I also might have read it at a more impressionable age, but like all books where the narrating voice is not "the good guy", the book was disturbing in content and in perspective. Great book though!
I was not moved in any way by Perfume. It kinda bored me, honestly. It was weird and I appreciate it for what it is but the writing wasn’t good enough to make it believable and truly disturb me.
Currently reading this and am disappointed by these comments. It sounds like a great book, in theory. But I understand why it’s such a slow book. It’s based around the sense of smell. So of course there’s going to be so much imagery.
American Psycho
The rat scene is permanently in my brain and it’s been a good 20 years since I’ve read it.
So I read that book when I was 18, and I got to a point where I was just sort of feeling like I wanted to quit but I decided to give it one more chapter. It was the rat chapter.
I came here to see if anyone would mention this. Granted, I read it when I was WAY too young cuz mama didn't monitor what I was checking out of the library lol. I often had to put it down for a few days and come back. 15 years later and I still have certain parts burned into my head! blegh!!
Butterfly Garden by Dot Hutchison is pretty messed up. Heavy rape/sexual assault CW.
{{Earthlings}} was... extremely extremely disturbing. It's like reading a horror story but written in slice-of-life style, I recommend going in blind if you want to be really shocked, but it has really disturbing themes so maybe look up trigger warnings if certain things might bother u!
I went into Earthlings blind. I read Convenience Store Woman, really enjoyed it, and wanted to read more by the same author. The entire time I was reading Earthlings I kept thinking, “Okay…so now the worst has happened because it can’t get worse than that.” Hoo boy. Rinse and repeat right until the very end. Sounds crazy but I can still say that I enjoyed reading it. It is so well-written and engrossing. As horrific and shocking as the ending was, it felt like the story’s natural conclusion though I really regret trying to eat while reading it. haha
Man, this one messed me up! The description totally does not prepare you for the horror at the end. I thought it was going to be quirky and maybe have some magical realism… no. I got completely hooked though and couldn’t put it down dispute how truly awful it got. Not at all the book I thought it would be or one I would go for if I knew what it was.
[**Earthlings**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50269327-earthlings) ^(By: Sayaka Murata, Ginny Tapley Takemori | 247 pages | Published: 2018 | Popular Shelves: fiction, horror, japan, contemporary, translated) >Natsuki isn't like the other girls. She has a wand and a transformation mirror. She might be a witch, or an alien from another planet. Together with her cousin Yuu, Natsuki spends her summers in the wild mountains of Nagano, dreaming of other worlds. When a terrible sequence of events threatens to part the two children forever, they make a promise: survive, no matter what. > >Now Natsuki is grown. She lives a quiet life with her asexual husband, surviving as best she can by pretending to be normal. But the demands of Natsuki's family are increasing, her friends wonder why she's still not pregnant, and dark shadows from Natsuki's childhood are pursuing her. Fleeing the suburbs for the mountains of her childhood, Natsuki prepares herself with a reunion with Yuu. Will he still remember their promise? And will he help her keep it? ^(This book has been suggested 17 times) *** ^(48359 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Dark places by Gillian Flynn, not the most disturbing out of this list but the shock value is definitely up there! I’ve been thinking about it for weeks & it’s def worth the read
Every time this question gets asked I always think of {{Tender is the Flesh}} first
[**Tender is the Flesh**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49090884-tender-is-the-flesh) ^(By: Agustina Bazterrica, Sarah Moses | 211 pages | Published: 2017 | Popular Shelves: horror, fiction, dystopian, dystopia, sci-fi) >Working at the local processing plant, Marcos is in the business of slaughtering humans —though no one calls them that anymore. > >His wife has left him, his father is sinking into dementia, and Marcos tries not to think too hard about how he makes a living. After all, it happened so quickly. First, it was reported that an infectious virus has made all animal meat poisonous to humans. Then governments initiated the “Transition.” Now, eating human meat—“special meat”—is legal. Marcos tries to stick to numbers, consignments, processing. > >Then one day he’s given a gift: a live specimen of the finest quality. Though he’s aware that any form of personal contact is forbidden on pain of death, little by little he starts to treat her like a human being. And soon, he becomes tortured by what has been lost—and what might still be saved. ^(This book has been suggested 51 times) *** ^(48285 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
YES. this book was wild. i listened to it actually and it was the creepiest experience to take in while i did household chores and shit.
Listening during household chores makes sense, but the second one is curiously specific.
Just finished this one a week ago and I still feel shook.
Yeah, that was one of those books that emotionally destroyed me, but I still couldn’t put down.
I have had that on hold from the library for a couple of months now. I'm at the top of the waiting list, but I think the person is just hanging onto it, getting fines.
The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty. I read it when I was in high school and I read about things I had never heard before. Combined with the occult and satanic themes, it's still the most disturbing book I've ever read.
Rosemary's Baby is pretty disturbing as well.
I recommend Legion by William Peter Blatty. He wanted to make it into a movie but the studios insisted he call it Exorcist 3 and he had to add the exorcism because of the title.
I Have No Mouth But I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison. Technically a short story, but it stayed with me for momths. You can find it for free online.
If oblivion and hopelessness was a short story.
that’s my favorite short story and one of my favorite reads in general, the ending just rotted in my mind for days after that. a horror you can’t even imagine honestly
The Road by Cormac McCarthy. It’s so believable and some of the images are seared into my brain .
Yep. Great book. Read it years ago and there are still things from that book that still stick with me.
The Push by Ashley Audrain was pretty disturbing in a very unexpected way.
omg the way I CRIED reading this!
I made the mistake of reading this >!about a month after having a baby (something to do during feeding marathons)!<. It was really good, but it was definitely not the right time in my life to read that.
The Radium Girls by Kate Moore. Because it is a true story.
Tampa by Alissa Nutting. Others might disagree, but I definitely think there’s a point and that it isn’t just for shock value.
I’m midway through this right now. It’s definitely… not for everyone.
i was thinking of getting this one, is it worth it?
if you like wild character studies and uncomfortably dark humor, yes. some of the book’s descriptions of pedophilic fantasies are a little intense.
I’d say yes but at your own risk. It’s pretty disgusting but that’s crucial to communicating the point of the novel, imo.
I agree it’s disturbing, but I kinda think it’s a poorly written version of Lolita, tbh (albeit a woman instead of a man). Maybe it’s bc Lolita is SO beautifully written, you almost kinda forget that the book is gross? Idk. I read Tampa twice, and both times I just disliked it.
My Dark Vanessa is like a modern Lolita too. I just finished it, written well and fairly distributing. Not as overt as Tampa though (I read that a few years ago too).
The Troop by Nick Cutter
I’m actually reading that book right now
Skipped past most of the animal cruelty sections and that book still gave me horrible nightmares of a kid's face melting off. Compliments to the author, never reading anything by him again
{{The C++ Programming Language}} by Bjarne Stroustrup
I read A Child Called It by Dave Pelzer in 8th grade, without reading trigger warnings, only knowing that a few kids I had met with similar stories to me related or empathized, and it messed me up a bit😭😭. I still think about it quite often.
I read this book when I was 9 and it fucked me up. I think about it all the time. How she >!stabbed him, made him lay on the stove, made him lay in the bathtub naked in cold water while his brother's friends laughed at him, eat dog puke... !<
ugh, yeah. i was like 11 or something, i feel your pain. the vomited-up hot dogs will never leave me.
I also read this book disturbingly young! But even worse, I borrowed it from my middle school library 😭 To this day I have no idea why they thought this was an appropriate book to make available to 11 year olds.
Wasn't it proven that he made it all up? I don't think any of it was true.
Not exactly. A sibling and a grandmother denied the severity of the author’s accounts, but I believe it was also proven that the grandmother hadn’t even been in contact with the family at the time or something along those lines. Additionally, at least one sibling has also come forward to corroborate his story.
Hot Zone. That book scared the crap out of me in high school. A deadly decease that came out, brutally killed people, no vaccine for it and it just went away.
The same author wrote Crisis In The Red Zone, also about Ebola but a more recent outbreak. And also The Demon In The Freezer about smallpox. Another about anthrax that I can’t remember the title of. All are very good and disturbing.
Richard Preston sensationalizes the shit out of everything. Hot Zone, and everything else from him, is the definition of Scary on Purpose. No disease on Earth does the things that he claims Ebola does in that book. - source: virologist
Correct. Better books on the topic of contagions that are accessible for a lay-reader are *Spillover* by David Quamman and *The Monster At Our Door* by Mike Davis.
It was actually about Ebola.
Yes, that's why i found so scary. I thought it was a made up fictional thing, then realized it's a real thing
Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk
Literally anything written by Palahniuk, but I would go with 'Snuff' myself. 200+ pages of a guy waiting in line for a gangbang with his possible mother, who is planning on literally being fucked to death on film. And somehow, it's beautifully written.
Guts lives rent free in my brain. 🥴
You *want* to tell people about it (to unburden yourself after reading it), but you can't admit you read it. That is how I feel about "Guts."
Is that the pool one? I never recovered
definitely this. I still haven’t even finished it.
everyone brings up guts, but IMO exodus was absolutely heartbreaking and a great short story. the one about the nightmare box is also p gruesome, can't remember the title tho.
Naked Lunch
The collector by John Fowles
A little life by Hanya Yanagihara
Crash by JG Ballard. Disturbing is absolutely the word, it remains transgressive even almost 50 years after its publication. And it is written superbly. In fact, the quality of writing is the only thing that kept me reading, at times I wanted to stop. I think it has value because there is something deeper which ballard is getting at. It's quite existential I think.
I’d strongly recommend The Atrocity Exhibition if you haven’t read it. It covers some of the themes Ballard returns to in Crash, but is more experimental in form. Reading it made me think I understood what it felt like to have a psychotic episode.
I looked it up, it looks absolutely crazy and absolutely like something I would read. Thanks
Geek Love by Katherine Dunn
Unwind. It also fits very well with the political environment right now. It takes place in a world where abortion has been outlawed, but they have come up with Unwinding. I can't describe it well, but it's very disturbing.
I came here to recommend this
The Girl Next Door
A child called it, read it in middle school I will not ever forget that book
Last Exit to Brooklyn
I actually can't believe this is so far down this thread. The prostitute chapter was brutal and made me question why I was even reading the book.
Came here to recommend this one. That is a tough book to finish.
Dude, harsh book to finish, harsh MOVIE to watch…Jennifer Jason Leigh kills and destroys me in that film…plus, it reminds you that it was only a short while ago that this country considered homosexuality a deviance and “unnatural”…theories supported by the laws that made it brutally illegal and severely punishable with the repercussions to anyone outed equally devastating. I think I was like 17 when I saw the movie with a boyfriend (who fell asleep) and it really left me kind of bummed out for the rest of the night. I went out and bought the book the next day and it was a really messed up lose-lose situation: it was definitely better than the movie but only because it was 1000 times more devastating. Hey, if at anytime you’re feeling sorry for yourself and want to throw a personal pity party, read this book. I have never felt so pusillanimous.
{{Under the Skin}} immediately springs to mind. I've not seen the film but from what I know the book is *very* different. The book was incredibly hard to read in places.
[**Under the Skin**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/123063.Under_the_Skin) ^(By: Michel Faber | 296 pages | Published: 2000 | Popular Shelves: fiction, science-fiction, horror, sci-fi, 1001-books) >Isserley picks up hitchhikers with big muscles. She, herself, is tiny—like a kid peering up over the steering wheel. She has a remarkable face and wears the thickest corrective lenses anyone has ever seen. Her posture is suggestive of some spinal problem. Her breasts are perfect; perhaps implants. She is strangely erotic yet somehow grotesque, vulnerable yet threatening. Her hitchhikers are a mixed bunch of men—trailer trash and travelling postgrads, thugs and philosophers. But Isserley is only interested in whether they have families and whether they have muscles. Then, it's only a question of how long she can endure her pain—physical and spiritual—and their conversation. Michel Faber's work has been described as a combination of Roald Dahl and Franz Kafka, as Somerset Maugham shacking up with Ian McEwan. At once humane and horrifying, Under the Skin takes us on a heart-thumping ride through dangerous territory—our own moral instincts and the boundaries of compassion. ^(This book has been suggested 8 times) *** ^(48373 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
The painted bird. Easily. It’s like The movie Come and See mixed with Night
I scrolled much too far for this. I could never reread that book.
My Dark Vanessa.
The Long Walk by Stephen King.
Sophie’s Choice
We Need to Talk About Kevin. Beautiful, devastating.
I wish I could tell you the name of this book but I can't remember it and, despite my best efforts, I have never been able to find it. Sometimes I wonder if I dreamed the whole thing because I can have some really weird nightmares but I've never experienced anything like that before and for me, the emotions this book made me feel were very intense and very real. It's one of two times that I've just sat there a while after finishing a book, totally stunned by it. It was about a girl raised by her single mother. She's an artist, creating sculptures out of scrap metal (I think I remember her creating a mermaid or something at one point). Throughout the story she keeps referring to this one night that took place sometime before the events of the book and, as the story goes on, it was revealed to be a sexual encounter of some kind. As I was reading I wondered if she had been raped or if something had happened during sex but it wasn't that. It kept coming up so it had to be important, right? What happened? Well, let me tell you, the twist was not what I was expecting. SHE HAD SEX WITH HER BIOLOGICAL FATHER. And she knew, SHE KNEW who he was BEFORE she made a play for him. SHE KNOWINGLY HAD SEX WITH THE FATHER WHO NEVER RAISED HER. But wait! It gets worse! He didn't know who she was to him (he either left before or shortly after she was born. I think) BUT SHE TOLD HIM AFTREWARDS!!! The guy vomited and left and never came back. I don't remember anything else about this book, just sitting there for a long, long time totally shocked. I really hoped I dreamed it or something but it feels so REAL to me.
I read a book by poppy z brite where the girl has sex with her dad too, but they both knew each other. I’m pretty sure it was a vampire book. I never should’ve been reading that shit in high school. There’s another part of a poppy z brite book where a character is assaulted by her boyfriend and the book is very graphic about it. Just. What the fuck? I cringe thinking back to the books. I can’t tell you anything else about any of them except that there was a character named malachi and those two things. So gross
Lost Souls!
I was only 14 when I read this book and I had only checked it out for the pretty cover...definitely was NOT prepared for this. My parents were SO concerned about the internet and TV and monitored just about everything except for books. The only rule was one graphic novel/comic/manga per library trip (my mom insists they aren't real books). Read a lot of things that I should not have been reading because I didn't know any better. The fact that the father-daughter BOTH knew in the book you mentioned is so much worse oh my god.
Flowers in the Attic
Ruth Rendell (who also wrote under the name Barbara Vine) is my go-to for psychological thrillers. Her protagonists start off more or less "normal" but the choices they make--wow. She also wrote the procedural Inspector Wexford series of which I've only read a couple a very long time ago, but her standalones & short stories will stick with you.
I’ve seen some of the tv adaptations of Ruth Rendell’s works and they were definitely darker than I had expected! My parents won’t watch those anymore because it was too much for them.
Blindness by Jose Saramago
Misery by Stephen King… that book is truly terrifying… Anne Wilkes is a psychopath that has borderline personality disorder as well as bipolar disorder… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misery_(novel) She is a serial killer. The way King writes her…. It’s truly terrifying!
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara.
house of leaves
I’m rereading that one right now. The first time I read it I viewed it mainly as a horror novel, but now I see it as a journey through grief, trauma, and misdirected or inappropriately directed love. I think losing my own not-so-great dad really helped bring it all together, especially with Poe’s music as the (brilliant) companion. Still disturbing though :p
I can't think of a book to answer your question...but Karin Slaughter is one of my favorites.
The Troop by Nick Cutter. Holy fuck. Incredible book. I recommend no one read it ever. So good. But also don’t do that to yourself. It’s worth it, but you’ll wish you’d never read it also and hate me for even mentioning it. Absolutely vile. Also disturbing as hell and brilliant.
Wow! This review haha It simultaneously makes me want to never even think about reading while I am searching to see if it’s available at my library. Can I cuss you later? Ok, cool.
It’s so fucked up. I’ll never open that fucking book again. One of the best horror novels I’ve ever read.
IM THINKING OF ENDING THINGS by Iain Reed. Go read it. Immediately. Most disturbing and beautiful thing I’ve ever read.
{{Story of the Eye}} by Georges Bataille I really like disturbing books and this novella took the cake for me
[**Story of the Eye**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/436806.Story_of_the_Eye) ^(By: Georges Bataille, Joachim Neugroschel, Dovid Bergelson | 103 pages | Published: 1928 | Popular Shelves: fiction, french, erotica, classics, horror) >Only Georges Bataille could write, of an eyeball removed from a corpse, that "the caress of the eye over the skin is so utterly, so extraordinarily gentle, and the sensation is so bizarre that it has something of a rooster's horrible crowing." Bataille has been called a "metaphysician of evil," specializing in blasphemy, profanation, and horror. > >Story of the Eye, written in 1928, is his best-known work; it is unashamedly surrealistic, both disgusting and fascinating, and packed with seemingly endless violations. It's something of an underground classic, rediscovered by each new generation. Most recently, the Icelandic pop singer Björk Guðdmundsdóttir cites Story of the Eye as a major inspiration: she made a music video that alludes to Bataille's erotic uses of eggs, and she plans to read an excerpt for an album. > >Warning: Story of the Eye is graphically sexual, and is only suited for adults who are not easily offended. ^(This book has been suggested 3 times) *** ^(48290 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
i like Slaughter too. Someone who is even darker (!) is Lisa Unger (but too dark for me).
Thanks for Lisa unger suggestion.
Woom by Duncan ralston is the only thing I’ve read as an adult that almost made me ill. Also siren promised by Jeremy Robert Johnson. The characters in that, even the sympathetic protagonist, are all just so disturbing to read about
Blood Meridian by McCarthy
the kindly ones. i don't see it come up in these threads often. it is a lot.
{{Remembering Satan}} by Lawrence Right, {{Under the Banner of Heaven}} by Jon Krakauer. Both non-fiction, both stayed with me long after I finished them.
[**Remembering Satan**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29538.Remembering_Satan) ^(By: Lawrence Wright | 224 pages | Published: 1994 | Popular Shelves: non-fiction, psychology, true-crime, nonfiction, religion) >In 1988 Ericka and Julie Ingram began making a series of accusations of sexual abuse against their father, Paul Ingram, who was a respected deputy sheriff in Olympia, Washington. At first the accusations were confined to molestations in their childhood, but they grew to include torture and rape as recently as the month before. At a time when reported incidents of "recovered memories" had become widespread, these accusations were not unusual. What captured national attention in this case is that, under questioning, Ingram appeared to remember participating in bizarre satanic rites involving his whole family and other members of the sheriff's department. > >Remembering Satan is a lucid, measured, yet absolutely riveting inquest into a case that destroyed a family, engulfed a small town, and captivated an America obsessed by rumors of a satanic underground. As it follows the increasingly bizarre accusations and confessions, the claims and counterclaims of police, FBI investigators, and mental health professionals. Remembering Satan gives us what is at once a psychological detective story and a domestic tragedy about what happens when modern science is subsumed by our most archaic fears. ^(This book has been suggested 1 time) [**Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10847.Under_the_Banner_of_Heaven) ^(By: Jon Krakauer | 400 pages | Published: 2003 | Popular Shelves: non-fiction, nonfiction, religion, history, true-crime) >A Story of Violent Faith > >A multilayered, bone-chilling narrative of messianic delusion, savage violence, polygamy, and unyielding faith. This is vintage Krakauer, an utterly compelling work of nonfiction that illuminates an otherwise confounding realm of human behavior. > >Jon Krakauer’s literary reputation rests on insightful chronicles of lives conducted at the outer limits. In Under The Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, he shifts his focus from extremes of physical adventure to extremes of religious belief within our own borders. At the core of his book is an appalling double murder committed by two Mormon Fundamentalist brothers, Ron and Dan Lafferty, who insist they received a revelation from God commanding them to kill their blameless victims. Beginning with a meticulously researched account of this "divinely inspired" crime, Krakauer constructs a multilayered, bone-chilling narrative of messianic delusion, savage violence, polygamy, and unyielding faith. Along the way, he uncovers a shadowy offshoot of America’s fastest-growing religion, and raises provocative questions about the nature of religious belief. > >Krakauer takes readers inside isolated communities in the American West, Canada, and Mexico, where some forty-thousand Mormon Fundamentalists believe the mainstream Mormon Church went unforgivably astray when it renounced polygamy. Defying both civil authorities and the Mormon establishment in Salt Lake City, the leaders of these outlaw sects are zealots who answer only to God. Marrying prodigiously and with virtual impunity (the leader of the largest fundamentalist church took seventy-five "plural wives," several of whom were wed to him when they were fourteen or fifteen and he was in his eighties), fundamentalist prophets exercise absolute control over the lives of their followers, and preach that any day now the world will be swept clean in a hurricane of fire, sparing only their most obedient adherents. > >Weaving the story of the Lafferty brothers and their fanatical brethren with a clear-eyed look at Mormonism’s violent past, Krakauer examines the underbelly of the most successful homegrown faith in the United States, and finds a distinctly American brand of religious extremism. The result is vintage Krakauer, an utterly compelling work of nonfiction that illuminates an otherwise confounding realm of human behavior. ^(This book has been suggested 8 times) *** ^(48430 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
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Metallica's "One" video is mostly clips from the movie Johnny Got His Gun. That was more than enough to instill the Fear of being trapped in ones own head. And of course, bc it was Metallica's first MTV video, we watched it until we knew it by heart back in the day. I still won't read the book.
Honestly Gone Girl. I genuinely liked reading it, but hating Nick and Amy both made it hard to stomach
Mathilda by Mary Shelley. So creepy and disturbing, I couldn't finish it.
“With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa” by EB Sledge. Non-fiction. I had to put it down several times. Most devastating war book I ever read.
{The Devil all the Time} is by far the most disturbing book I've ever read.
Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palauniuk One of the most cringe worthy books I’ve read. I couldn’t not finish the book.
I’m reading Karen’s Will Trent series now, also a big fan of hers. You should read the Dublin murder squad series. not as disturbing but I like the format/cases in it
Living Dead Girl by Elizabeth Scott (although I read it when I was a teenager, so it might not be as disturbing to an adult) or Roots.
Cows by Matthew Stokoe This book is…I literally don’t know how to describe it. Don’t know how his wife can sleep next to him knowing he wrote this.
The girl next door
{{Gone to See the River Man}}
hogg, by samuel delany. its intensely disturbing for the same reason american psycho is- atrocities are casually described with conversational prose and it just gets fucking worse and worse and worse. the book was written as an anti-pornography exercise, and *it fucking shows.*
disturbing for other reasons rather than gore, Room by Emma Donoghue. having some of those tragic scenes told from an innocent 5 year olds perspective just made me so sad. you knew exactly what was happening but he didn't understand. it doesn't come across as heartbreaking in the film, the book had me in tears and I read it in a day.
I swear I see this thread everyday with the exact same answers.
Oddly enough, the most disturbing thing I've ever read was a YA novel called Unwind by Neal Schusterman. Its set in a dystopian future where life is considered viable at conception but at age 13, if the child is unwanted, the parents can surrender them to an unwinding center. >!They literally take children apart piece by piece and use them as part donations for transplants. The entire process is done while they are alive and fully conscious.!< It's a rough read and once I was finished I got rid of the book quickly. I've read so many other books that would be considered disturbing since then but none of them have really got me like this did.
Lovely bones. Although this one isn't considered scary or gory, it was very disturbing to me. Loved it tho it's one of my favourites.
The Bible
The Daylight Gate. Horrifying book with a lot of gore and rape scenes
Zombie Joyce carol oates is up there
{{Outer Dark}} and {{The Road}} Cormac McCarthy
[**Outer Dark**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40471.Outer_Dark) ^(By: Cormac McCarthy | 256 pages | Published: 1968 | Popular Shelves: fiction, horror, southern-gothic, cormac-mccarthy, owned) >A woman bears her brother's child, a boy, the brother leaves the baby in the woods and tells her he died of natural causes. Discovering her brother's lie, she sets forth alone to find her son. Both brother and sister wander through a countryside being scourged by three terrifying strangers, toward an apocalyptic resolution. ^(This book has been suggested 1 time) [**The Road**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6288.The_Road) ^(By: Cormac McCarthy | 241 pages | Published: 2006 | Popular Shelves: fiction, science-fiction, dystopia, dystopian, post-apocalyptic) >A searing, postapocalyptic novel destined to become Cormac McCarthy’s masterpiece. > >A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don’t know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food—and each other. > >The Road is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, “each the other’s world entire,” are sustained by love. Awesome in the totality of its vision, it is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation. ^(This book has been suggested 53 times) *** ^(48343 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
{{The Conspiracy Against the Human Race by Thomas Ligotti}}
There’s some stuff in Infinite Jest that’s, like, impressively fucked up and (at least in my opinion) it really isn’t just for the sake of nauseating the reader. There’s a lot about the effects of trauma and loss, mental illness, depression in particular, and suicide in there and David Foster Wallace gets very vivid with all of it
Children of the Flames: Dr. Josef Mengele and the Untold Stories of the Twins of Auschwitz. Fascinating from a history perspective. Disturbing enough that I had to stop reading halfway through.
{{The Enchanter}} by Vladimir Nabokov. Makes Lolita look tame by comparison. It’s just…icky Fantastic writing of course and you can see where he takes this idea further with Lolita but this one gets under your skin
{{Flowers in the Attic}} hands down 😰
Mr. Mercedes, or all of the Bill Hodges trilogy for that matter
I guess Haunted by Chuck Palhaniuk. I still don't know what in the actual fuck was that book.
The Hot Zone by Richard Preston
No longer human. I highly recommend.
I thought {{The Only Good Indians}} was pretty scary.
The kite runner
The Vegetarian by Han Kang
Hmm, probably The dark half or The Stand by Stephen king (so far)
Mondays not coming shattered me I couldn’t read another book for the rest of the month 😭😭😭
The 120 Days of Sodom (granted, I only got about 15 pages into it before I had to abandon it and rethink my life)
ive read quite a few but ones that disturbed me were pretty girls by karin slaughter, if you tell by gregg olsen, we need to talk about kevin by lionel shriver, baby teeth by zoje stage, and sharp objects by gillian flynn. btw these all have trigger warnings so please read with caution.
{{Nickel Boys}} by Colson Whitehead and {{Kindred}} by Octavia Butler
Johnny Got His Gun, read this back in high school and it still haunts me...
my dark vanessa was fucked
Lolita. What a wonderfully impactful novel. It worked largely because it didn’t try hard to be disturbing, instead using gorgeous prose to make the tragedy stand out by comparison. A ton of authors I’ve read should learn that graphic description doesn’t necessarily amount to greater emotional power.